Progress

4,259 signed

741 more needed

Sign the Petition to

Jon Jarvis, National Park Service Director

We're asking you to phase out sales of bottled water in our national parks. A growing number of parks are going bottled water free and we support you in continuing this momentum for the whole national park system. Every year, hundreds of millions of park visitors get the message that the only place to get safe water is from a plastic bottle, even though bottled water is far less regulated than tap.

Our national parks are for the people, not for profit. Yet bottled-water corporations are using them as billboards and concession stands for their environmentally destructive product. The bottled-water industry is working to prevent parks from going bottled water free, because associating bottled water with parks helps paint their eco-unfriendly product green and undermines confidence in the tap.

We’re not buying it any more. Our parks are not for sale, and neither is our most essential shared resource: water. Water is our most basic human right. Our national parks are meant to be protected from exploitation and profiteering and water should be, too.

As a leader in protecting the nation’s most treasured wild places and resources, you have the unique opportunity to build on the momentum the Grand Canyon, Zion and others have already created in going bottled water free.

How this will help

People drink 2.6 billion gallons of water in national parks every year. That's enough to fill almost 4,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. That means a lot of water in plastic bottles that could be coming straight from the tap.

National parks going bottled water free is good for the environment, our pocketbooks and our democracy:

• People drink 2.6 billion gallons of water in national parks every year. That's enough to fill almost 4,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

• About 20 billion barrels of oil go into producing all the water bottles
that Americans throw out each year. And it generates more than 25
million tons of greenhouse gases. That's equivalent to putting about 4.7 million more cars on the road for a year!

• Before going bottled water free, Grand Canyon National Park estimated that30 percent of its recycling waste came from disposable plastic bottles.

• By going bottled water free, the Grand Canyon is conserving enough energy to power over 700 U.S. homes for a year!

Bottled-water giants bully the public and the parks:

• By selling and promoting bottled water in our national parks, the industry tries to paint its eco-unfriendly product green.

• The industry has built a $15 billion market by disparaging the tap, even though bottled water is less regulated. Our national parks are a treasure, not a concession stand! Large corporations are using one national treasure (our parks) to profit from another (our water) by selling and promoting bottled water in our nation's most pristine places. You can make a difference!

Protect our parks and make sure the bottled-water industry can no longer undermine confidence in the tap.

Call upon Jon Jarvis, the National Park Service Director, to help bottled
water take a hike out of our national parks by phasing out sales as
soon as possible.

We can promote and protect the environment, and the
tap, by making clear that water, like our parks, is not for sale and
deserves our long-term investment.